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1.1 a Montessori Classroom 1 Chapter 1 Introduction To be able to choose objects that will interest and hold the attention of the child is to know the means of aiding it in its mental development. (Montessori 1993 [1915], p. 159) 1.1 A Montessori classroom To begin, let us picture a classroom for young children. This is not the iconic, colour- drained classroom represented so often in Western culture, in print and on film, where we expect to find passive children seated in rows, books and pencils ready on their desks, while at the front a teacher, stereotypically kindly or stern, delivers the lesson from a book or a blackboard. Nor is it a contemporary early childhood classroom, with active children playing in bright surroundings, where we expect to see finger paints, water play, modelling clay, percussion instruments, story-telling and solicitous adults competing for the children’s attention, alongside a multi-coloured kaleidoscope of toys and games spilling out of baskets and crates. Instead, let us picture a classroom somewhat different from these familiar images. The design of this classroom follows principles proposed, early last century, by the Italian educator, Dr Maria Montessori. These principles were derived from Montessori’s experience working as a paediatrician and an educator in the slums of Rome. These same principles still apply today in Montessori classrooms across the world. A visitor to a Montessori classroom, or more accurately, a Montessori environment, notices that the walls of the room are lined with open shelves. The height of the shelves is determined by the age of the children who use the classroom. Displayed on the shelves, carefully ordered and each in its own place, is a collection of objects. Children are absorbed in using these objects, selecting the objects from the shelves, taking them to a mat or small table, and working with them as long as they wish before returning them to the shelf, adults unobtrusively demonstrating and intervening where needed. The objects appear, at first glance, to be simple in design, yet the semiotic intricacy of these objects is the focus of this study. 2 The objects attract the attention of anyone entering a Montessori classroom. From the perspective of children entering the room, the objects stand out because they are placed in the centre of the children’s field of vision and within easy reach. From the perspective of adults, the objects stand out because their qualities and characteristics are similar to, but do not exactly match, the experience most adults have of classroom teaching materials. The objects have a sensory appeal, varying in colour, shape, size, texture, and possibilities for manipulation. Contrasts in colour and shape are clear and unambiguous; sizes and textures differ in ordered ways. The array of sensory contrasts, however, suggests purposeful variation, rather than a random placement of brightly coloured objects to appeal to immature minds. Each set of objects occurs only once, or very occasionally there may be two or three, but there are no class sets. The first objects to catch the eye are obviously made by expert woodworkers, or similar artisans. They are crafted from wood, coloured beads, high quality metal and plastic. They are shaped with precision and are graded in size in relation to each other; the colours are pure, bright and clearly delineated. Other objects on the shelves are made by the teacher, from designs handed down over decades and handed over during training. These materials are generally made from paper or cardboard, then laminated for durability. They comprise, for example, colour-coded sets of pictures and labels, charts and booklets. Often the teacher-made materials are customised for the students, for example, to account for the school community, the contents of the classroom, local geography, flora, fauna or culture. From the perspective of both child and adult, each object has the potential for interaction, each object demands a response. Some objects stand on the shelf, inviting the observer to pick them up, to touch a shape or a surface, to replace a shape into a frame, to feel the weight lying in their hand, to move parts around, to try out new configurations. Other objects are stored inside baskets or open wooden boxes, inviting the observer to look inside, to take them out and to discover what it is they actually do. Contemporary English-speaking Montessori teachers tend to call these objects ‘the materials’, although when the objects were first designed during the first half of the twentieth century, they were more often referred to as ‘the 3 apparatus’. Whatever Montessori teachers have called these objects over the last hundred years, they have never called them ‘toys’. The objects found in a Montessori classroom are the topic of this study. They have a history and a context, which have influenced their design. The design, most significantly however, has a pedagogic motivation. These objects are designed to capture and to hold the attention of children in the service of their education. It is the purpose of this study to explore whether the design of the objects embodies semiotic qualities, with the potential to structure children’s attention in a way that orients them to the meanings of educational knowledge. Specifically, the study will locate these objects in their historical context, propose some generalised design principles, investigate the design and use of one particular selection of these objects, evaluate their semiotic potential as educational artefacts, and propose future possibilities for research. Photo: State Government Archives collection, Photo: Candy le Guay (1984) State Library of NSW Illustration 1.1 Illustration 1.2 Blackfriars Demonstration School Inner City Montessori School Chippendale, Sydney (1914) Drummoyne, Sydney (1984) 1.1.1 The Montessori objects Some of the objects in Montessori classrooms were first designed by Maria Montessori in Italy a century ago. Their provenance stretches back a century before that to France at the turn of the nineteenth century. Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, these objects continue to be used daily in thousands of Montessori classrooms across the world. The story of these objects, and their designer, is an intriguing tale. Although it is beyond 4 the scope of this study to do justice to the story of Montessori’s life, the history of her ideas or the extent of her life’s work, some key elements of the story will be reviewed because Montessori’s contribution can only be appreciated once it has been located in its historical context. This is not to suggest that the objects in Montessori classrooms are only of interest as historical artefacts. Their continued and widespread use in contemporary Montessori schools demonstrates that there are many who believe in the enduring educational value of these objects. The present study proposes that the resistance of the objects to obsolescence can be traced to the principles of the objects’ design and use. The origins of those principles are found in Montessori’s historical context and, from that time, were largely quarantined from the succession of conflicting ideas which dominated educational thinking in the twentieth century. The ebb and flow of the dominant ideas, however, have circumscribed both advocacy and criticism of the Montessori approach since its inception, obscuring, as a result, the nature of Montessori’s distinctive contribution to education in general and pedagogy in particular. This study aims to make Montessori’s distinctive contribution visible by examining the design of the objects from the perspective of the educational meanings they encode for the children who use them. 1.2 Maria Montessori and her legacy 1.2.1 Montessori’s life and work Maria Montessori lived a long and eventful life. She was born in Italy in 1870 and died in the Netherlands in 1952. By the end of her life she had designed a detailed educational method and had founded a movement to support its dissemination. The method and the movement bear her name. Contemporary English-speaking readers know of Montessori’s life primarily through two biographies. The first, written by a close collaborator, E. M. Standing, was published in 1957, five years after Montessori died. This was an official biography, some of it based on the memoirs of one of Montessori’s earliest and closest confidantes, Anna 5 Maccheroni1. Standing’s biography is a glowing endorsement of Montessori’s work, and includes much which borders on hagiography. The introduction to the 1962 American edition even warns the reader to ‘beware of Standing’s own infectious attitude’ (McDermott 1962, pp. xiv-xv).2 Nevertheless, Standing provides helpful detail, unavailable in other published sources, about the genesis of the iconic Montessori materials and their use. It is also a source of many of the anecdotes that have become a part of the Montessori tradition. A more often-cited biography of recent decades, by Rita Kramer, first appeared in 1976. Kramer’s biography presents a more critical stance. It establishes a broader historical context for the genesis of Montessori’s ideas and a more detailed account of her nomadic and often dislocated life. Kramer (1978 [1976], pp. 24-34) offsets the apocryphal accounts of Montessori’s early life with well-researched historical detail. The young Montessori is described as a strong-minded and determined child. She did well at school without enjoying it very much, resolving at an early age never to be a teacher. Montessori excelled at mathematics, and, unusually for a girl at that time, attended technical school. She planned first to be an engineer, but eventually decided to become a doctor. She completed her undergraduate science degree in 1892 to a standard which made her eligible to enter the Medical College of Rome, but, as it was unheard of for young women in Italy to study medicine, this seemed impossible.
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